There’s no denying it, social media marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing today. This is because individuals now have access to social media everywhere they go. Social media marketing is so effective because it’s a fun and engaging way to collect and share information. People can share their stories, ideas, and values anytime, anywhere, and any they want on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
With nearly all businesses using social media, it’s becoming more difficult to make your voice heard above the rest. According to CoSchedule, 97 percent of marketers are engaging in social media marketing, making it one of the most popular–and thus challenging–promotional tools available.
In this post, We’ll go through the top 10 strategies for boosting your company’s social media participation. Let’s get started.
Benefits of Social Media Engagement for Businesses
- Helps businesses connect with customers and create relationships
- Raises brand awareness and strengthens branding
- Drives traffic to websites and blog content
- Increases sales and ROI
- Provides valuable customer insights
- Boosts SEO efforts
- Generates leads and builds email lists
- Connects you with industry thought leaders
- Keeps you up-to-date on trends
- Facilitates two-way communication!
Ways to Increase Your Social Media Engagement
01. Make a record of your current engagement rates
Before you can measure your engagement growth, you need to know where you are starting from. Take a look at some analytics and see your number of followers, likes, comments, clicks per post, or audience growth. The majority of social media platforms come with data dashboards that include all the information you need. All that’s left for you to do is figure out how to interpret the numbers.
02. Create objectives for future participation that you can track.
It’s now time to establish some objectives. The first thing you should aim for is your social media marketing efforts.
- What audience are you trying to reach?
- What activities would you like them to perform after seeing your material?
- How will you know if it was a success?
Before you can prioritize which engagement metrics to focus on, it’s essential to understand that not all engagements are equal. For example, the Instagram algorithm gives more weight to saves, shares, and comments than likes.
Determine which interactions to track based on your company objective (if you want to promote brand recognition, concentrate on increasing page visits; if your goal is to establish a community, focus on growing the number of followers or comments under each post, etc.).
Next, decide which social media sites to concentrate your efforts on that will help you achieve your above objectives the most. Remember, it’s sometimes simpler to create a successful engagement strategy if you limit the number of platforms you focus on.
03. Respond to all comments, questions, and messages
When someone takes the time to comment on one of your posts, the least you can do is respond! This will show your audience that you read and appreciate their comments. If you’re not able to answer every single comment, it’s still important to at least like or acknowledges each one.
It’s not only essential to reply to comments but also to private messages. Customers frequently use social media platforms as a customer service tool, so it’s critical that you monitor your direct messages and aim to answer them as soon as possible (preferably within 24 hours).
Don’t forget that people are more likely to trust and buy from companies that they feel connected to on a personal level.
04. Create content that encourages readers to comment
If you want to increase the number of comments on your posts, you need to create material that is comment worthy! This could be anything from sharing an opinion or statistic that provokes discussion to ask a question at the end of your post.
You could also try using social media polls as they are an easy way to get people talking and give you an idea of what your audience is thinking. Just make sure that the questions you ask are relevant to your brand/company.
05. Use the same principles to create unique social media post formats.
Spend some time experimenting with various sorts of social media postings to boost interaction. Here are a few post formats and themes to think about:
- Behind-the-scenes tours
- Customer spotlights
- “Live” video events
- Infographics
- Quotes
- Video Q&A
- This-or-that questions
- Contests and giveaways
- Surveys
- Animated GIFs and Memes
You can’t tell which ones will get the most attention and interaction until you try them. Furthermore, because there are so many social media sites to choose from, you have a lot of options. If you’re searching for ideas, check out this handpicked collection of social media ideas and suggestions for how to make the most of them.
06. Include Images or Videos in Your Social Media Posts
Including photos or videos in your social media marketing plan is becoming one of the most effective business assets for gaining new followers, growing your brand, and increasing sales. According to Forbes, 91 percent of customers favor interactive and visual content over traditional text-based or static media.
Within the last few years, incorporating video material into your social media marketing plan has become a must. Video content has gotten more affordable and accessible in recent years, and businesses need to make emotionally evocative films as part of their other marketing efforts. Forbes states:
“Your videos will be seen by customers with the assumption that someone they trust already watched and shared it. All of thithemtime spent watching your video content translates to more time on your site, which suggests that the search engines think your site is stuffed with interesting information.”
07. Create genuine social media posts.
While there’s a lot you can do on social media, not everything is going to match your business identity. So make sure you’re creating content and picking formats that are genuine to you. For example, entrepreneur Marie Forleo is active on all of the major social media platforms with hundreds of thousands of followers. She could just spam them with different sorts of messages. What Forleo does instead, however, is stay in her lane.
Marie’s posts—which she shares across multiple channels— focus on inspiration and motivation. Her images and videos feature Marie talking directly to her followers, rather than infographics or GIFs. And that’s important for building engagement on social media. Authenticity is key when marketing your brand; otherwise, people will catch on that it’s all just an act.
08 . Take advantage of present events or trends.
It’s crucial to stay current with events in your business’s surroundings. By discussing recent happenings on social media, you have a great chance of connecting with your target audience. As Hootsuite mentions: “Just join a conversation that’s already happening. Commenting on current events and trends in a way that ties in your brand is an opportunity to instantly connect with an audience in a timely way.”
09. Don't just sit there and wait for people to come to you.
Dedicate some time every week to finding new relevant individuals to connect with. Following Gary Vee’s $1.80 engagement approach is one method to quickly accomplish this. This tried-and-true technique encourages you to look for people via the most popular hashtags in your niche and leave something worthwhile in their postings.Other methods include engaging with:
Below are examples of types of accounts that you may want to follow on social media:
– Customers who’ve shared photos or recommendations of your products.
– Companies whose missions you support and want to keep tabs on.
– Brands you want to partner with.
– Blogs and news sites that share content that you and your audience will find valuable.
– Cute and funny accounts that add some extra positivity to your feed.
Whether you’re sharing your enthusiasm for a competing brand’s product or simply joining in on other users’ conversations, you need to get out there and socialize. It’s a fantastic method to demonstrate that your company cares about building genuine connections and being part of the social media ecosystem rather than just using it to increase conversions.
10. Make Them Laugh
Your brand needs a personality and voice if you want to gain the trust of your consumers. People use social media for entertainment, not to get sold things! If every single one of your posts is trying too hard to promote something and convince people to buy it, then you’re going to lose their attention very quickly. A better method would be using humor in your posts regularly- this will make them more entertaining for your followers and lead to increased social media engagement. You could employ memes or GIFs that help express emotion, or come up with jokes that are clever puns related to what you do.
Final Thoughts:
Now that you know about the many ways to boost social media engagement, you may put it into practice.
